Card reader, touchpad on Acer Laptop stopped working after upgrade to Windows 7

Looking around the internet, I can see that this has been a common problem -- people upgraded their Acer laptops from Microsoft Vista to Windows 7, and lost functionality of their card reading devices, and touch pads and some other devices.

For the the Card reader

On my Acer Aspire 5630, I tried several things, but the one that seems to have restored the driver, was to go to Acer's support page:

   http://support.acer.com/drivers_download.aspx

I found my laptop and downloaded the zip file for the card reader driver. Then I unzipped the file to my desktop.

Apparently, just installing the driver by using the Setup.exe, is not enough.
You may have to specify the operating system that the driver is made for.

To do this, have your Windows 7 machine on, the installation folder open, and the driver's Setup.exe file located:

1. Right-click on the Setup.exe file.
2. From the pop-up menu, choose "Properties."
3. Click on the [Compatability] tab of the pop-up Setup.exe Properties window.
4. Check on "[x] Run this program in compatability mode for:"
5. Choose [Windows Vista Service Pack 2] from the drop down, or whatever your driver is made for.
6. Click okay.
7. Double-click the Setup.exe installer and follow the prompts.

You may need to reboot your operating system.

At some point, hopefully, you will see that Windows 7 is installing a new device, which will be your SD Card / Memory Stick reader.

You can verify this by looking under Start button > Control Panel > Device Manger and looking for "Storage Controllers."

For the TouchPad Driver

On my touch pad, there the main area, the two buttons on the bottom and the silver 4-sided scroll button in the middle. On the main area, the right side is supposed to allow you to press and drag to scroll.

After installing Windows 7, the silver square button was being totally ignored, and I don't think the press and scroll was working on the touch pad either.

On my Acer 5630, the touchpad appears to be manufactured by a company called Synaptics.

I found drivers for the touch pad here:

  http://www.synaptics.com/support/drivers

However, after I installed the download for Windows 7, I did not get full functionality out of the buttons. I did get it to recognize the silver button, but it is only as a left-click, not a scroller. But the press and drag does work fine now.

The last thing that doesn't seem to work in the volume control / media controller on the right side of the keyboard. I'm reading that this can't be fixed without going back to the original Acer software widget. I haven't figured it out yet.